It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
This came as a bit of unexpected surprise, but it seems that BitMain already has a working ASIC miner for the Blake (2b) mining algorithm (and maybe even for other variants of Blake) and they have announced their plans to start shipping the Antminer A3. The Blake 2b crypto algorithm is currently being used by SiaCoin (SC) and last year there was a pre-order for an official SiaCoin ASIC miner the Obelisk SC1. BitMain’s ASIC miner however seems to be arriving much earlier with similar specifications and price, so anyone that has pre-ordered an Obelisk SC1 might not be that happy. On the other hand people that are interested in getting into mining SiaCoin and missed their chance with the pre-order might order now from BitMain and get the device shipped in 10 days after payment according to the company.
BitMain Antminer A3 Specifications:
– Product model: A3
– Hash ASIC type: BM1720
– Hashing algorithm: Blake(2b)
– Total quantity of hash chips: 180 chips
– Total quantity of hash boards: 3 boards per miner
– Total hash rate: 815 GHS ±5%
– DC voltage input: 11.60~13.00 V
– DC current input @12V DC: 98.8 A +7%
– DC Power @12V DC input: 1186 W +7%
– 220VAC Power @25℃, 93% conversion efficiency of APW3: 1275 W + 7%
– 220VAC Power efficiency @25℃,93% conversion efficiency of APW3: 1.56 mJ/MH + 7%
– Weight (without package): 4.2 kg
– Operation temperature: 0-40 ℃
– Storage temperature: -40-85 ℃
– Operation humidity: 5%RH – 95%RH, prevent condensation
– Noise: 76 dB
– Networking connection mode: Ethernet Cable
– Power connection mode: All three PCI-E ports are required to power the board. You can use one PSU to power multiple boards, but do not attempt to power one board with two PSUs. We suggest to prevent the control board to be powered up before hash boards be powered up.
– Size (Length*Width*Height, without package): 321mm*125mm*208mm
– For more details about the new BitMain Antminer A3 Blake (2b) ASIC miner…
Some of you might remember that back in June Sia has announced their plans to develop a dedicated SiaCoin (SC) ASIC miner called the Obelisk SC1 capable of 300+ GH/S at 500W or less power consumption according to the latest information. Well, it seems that Sia has figured out that since Decred (DCR) uses a very similar algorithm to what SiaCoin (SC) uses (both being variations of Blake) they can also develop the first ASIC miner for Decred as well. The Obelisk DCR1 should be capable of at least 475 GH/s with less than 500W of power usage and both ASIC miners should be available at pretty much the same time.
So now the pre-sale of the first batch of 4000 Obelisk DCR1 ASIC miners for Decred (DCR) is up for pre-sale on the Obelist’s website along the Obelist SC1 ASIC miner pre-sale for SiaCoin (SC). Both pre-sales will run up until November 24th and they are expected to ship on or before June 30th, 2018. Both Obelisk ASIC miners are available for pre-order at a price of $2499 USD and come with a 6 week exclusive mining period and a $250 per-unit coupon for future Obelisk purchases as a bonus. Now, since this is a pre-order for a product that is currently in development we advice you to be extra careful as we’ve seen a fair share of fails in that area and a lot of empty promises. We are not saying anything for the Obelisk, it seems to have a solid team working on the project according to the information available, we are just warning you to be careful as it is a pre-order for a product that is not yet developed and the final device (if/when available) may as well be different in terms of specifications as we’ve seen that happening as well.
If by the second half of next year Sia manages to deliver on their promise with the Obelisk ASIC miners for SiaCoin (SC) and Decred (DCR) they will significantly change the landscape for these two crypto coins. Now it is yet unclear how this will affect things regarding the use of the Sia file hosting services since it is more than just a crypto coin while Decred is more of a traditional crypto coin. The promise of securing the network better with ASICs is not new, the more important question here however is what if a limited number of people hold most of the ASIC’s power in a network… and then it becomes pointless to mine if you do not have access to an ASIC miner and/or cannot afford one.
– For more details about the upcoming Obelisk DCR1 and Obelisk SC1 ASIC miners…
The people behind the development of SiaCoin (SC) have tweeted an interesting, but very brief post about an upcoming release of a dedicated ASIC mining hardware intended for mining the SiaCoin tokens. The Obelisk SC1 is supposed to be the first ASIC built for Sia mining according to the official tweet from Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ). There are no more details revealed at this point, though more information should be made available by the end of the week.
SiaCoin has been getting more attention lately and the price of the crypto tokens has been rising, though releasing a mining ASIC for a token that is intended to be used for renting and leasing file storage is an interesting decision. Having a dedicated NAS device tied to SiaCoin like the MineBox makes much more sense for a service like that. SC can currently be mined using GPUs and not only being earned by providing free space to users that need to host some data and getting paid in SiaCoin tokens in return.
We are going to see what SiaCoin will actually announce and what their upcoming Obelisk SC1 will offer, but the initial user feedback is not that positive as one would expect. Switching to ASIC mining can actually result in negative results with GPU miners moving away switching to other altcoins and not getting into ASIC mining SC. As far as we are aware there are no other altcoins based on the same algorithm and mining like SiaCoin so essentially an ASIC miner will be very limited in terms of usability and may actually reach its end of life cycle much faster than other ASIC miners that can be used for multiple crypto coins that use the same algorithm.